# How To Deal With Romantic Relationships

Our evolutionary drive to reproduce is responsible for the ways in which we 
can feel attracted to one another. Understanding this is important as it 
defines, for a big part, gender dynamics. Looking at mankind's history thus 
far, we only very recently started breaking away from patriarchal social 
systems where for example men were in charge of hunting while women were 
responsible for the children. This resulted in biological traits that are 
still present today even while modern society is progressing away from it. 
This is reflected in relationships where dynamics are often to greater or 
lesser extent still directed by primitive tribal instincts. Our current 
paradigm doesn't take our evolutionary baggage into account and can bring 
about a lot of confusion, such as when men sometimes view women as only 
being attracted to ‘assholes'. The problem here is not that girls fall for 
‘assholes' but rather that they have a tendency to prefer men who are 
confident as it is one of the evolutionary qualities that increased our 
odds of survival. A caveman who is less inclined to assert himself is more 
likely to put his partner and children at risk. When such mechanisms are 
present for a thousand generations, you end up with these features being 
written into our DNA. And since relationships speak mostly to the emotions 
in us, relationship dynamics will go hand in hand with primal needs that 
have developed throughout millions of years of evolution. These primitive 
biological layers don't get to change over a few hundred years and that is 
why it is so important to course-correct them with our rationality and 
insight. The extent to which we do this will strengthen or weaken the more 
advanced and intellectual parts of our brain, allowing us to act with 
reason rather than emotion.

From my experience, showing acceptance for irrational behaviour or behaving 
irrationally yourself is not the best way of building a long-lasting 
relationship. Making clear what it is that you look for in a partner and 
finding someone who fits this description rather than trying to change 
people afterwards can only benefit the quality of your relationship and 
also tends to spark more attraction. Knowing who you are and what you stand 
for and only compromising when it makes sense is something that sets strong 
boundaries from the start that help to quickly reveal whether or not the 
relationship is compatible with you.

Many of the issues in relationships are a consequence of these irrational 
instincts where we lack the understanding in ourselves or each other. Since 
you can easily write a whole book about it, I decided to keep my advice 
simple.